


he is a storm (but you are not a wreckage)

by rory_the_dragon



Series: This Is Not A Fairytale [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: M/M, Minor Ableist Language, POV Second Person, dark!fic, unhealthy relationship dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-26
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2018-01-02 17:55:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1059795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rory_the_dragon/pseuds/rory_the_dragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is in love with you, madly and viciously, but he loves you like breathing, like burning, and you don’t know how to turn away from that, don’t want to. He is terrifying, mad and ancient. He is the darkest creature you’ve ever met, heard of, read about, and you love him so much more than you hate him. You are the truest believer and you believe in him even when you shouldn’t.</p><p>Two roads diverge, diverged, will diverge, atop a Neverland cliff and you, stubborn like Emma, like Regina, like yourself, take both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	he is a storm (but you are not a wreckage)

**Author's Note:**

> Companion piece to 'this is not a fairytale (you are not a hero)' told from Henry's POV. 
> 
> Warnings for violence, frequent mentions of violence kink, ableist language, seduction of a minor and possible underage sex because it's not made clear how old Henry is in this.

 

1\. You have always believed, heart bleeding on your sleeve and offered out to the world. Believing made the world make sense, made it better, and it _worked_ because you believed and you found Emma, found Snow, found Charming, you believed and found Neal. Believing found you a family, and then it ripped you away from them in the form of a creature wearing a teenager’s smirk, who says your name like he’s daring you, testing you, rolls it around in his mouth _henry_ and hands it back to you like a gift, a warning.

Your hand burns from where he clasped it, tight, and you remember the stories, remember that Peter Pan never lets go of anything without a fight.

But you have the blood of queens in you, and you’ve been into battle before.

 

 

2\. Do not show fear. It’s a lesson you learnt at your mother’s knee, learnt again in Emma and the walls you had to knock down to get to her, and you learn it for what has to be the final time in the face of him. You are young and you have been naïve, and in Neverland the former is a blessing and the latter is a curse, so you shed it, make yourself hard, like Emma, like Regina, then you pack them away, with your heart and your hurts, bury them deep _deep_ down until you can hear Pan’s song in the dark. Throw your hands in the air and dance around his campfire, pick up a weapon, learn to wield it, and never ever think about the family you found and lost, who have to be coming for you. 

(You will not survive long if you do.)

 

 

3\. The first thing he says to you is your name, then doesn’t stop, _henryhenryhenry_ , constant, with passing touches you shrug off, looks you pretend you can’t see. He says your name like he’s savouring it, tripping off his tongue like he can’t help but use it, and it takes you a day to realise that he’s not baiting you. He’s not doing it for you at all. He says your name like he’s been waiting years to do so, and your name sounds like delight in his mouth, sharp-tipped and cruel, but delight all the same.

 _I’ve been waiting a long time_ he says

 _Henry_ he says, and somehow it sounds like _finally_.

 

 

4\. He steals your clothes, so you steal his right back, taking from the taker, small victories wherever you can get them. He’s taller than you are, and his clothes are just this side of too big, too long on your arms, too gaping at your collar, but you don’t care because he comes back, dressed in your clothes without explanation like owns them – you realise then there’s only one thing left on this whole island that he hasn’t scrawled his name across and that’s you – and when he sees you, sitting by the fire like a challenge, there’s surprise written across his face, punched out of him in a breath of laughter. He’s reassessing you, and that might be more dangerous, but this is a _victory_.

He keeps your scarf. 

 

 

5\. When you grew up, you grew up lonely. No one wants to be friends with the mayor’s kid, especially Mayor Mills’ kid, so your childhood is an exercise in silence, an empty house and quiet afternoons in socked feet, sitting alone at lunchtime until Mary Margaret pulls you aside and gives you your greatest weapon, a leather-bound book that you can barely fit your littleboy hands around at first, that you grow into with reads and rereads. You devour it, and then you _realise_ , you believe. Your mom is an evil queen, your therapist is a cricket, and you can trace your lineage to kings and queens. None of that prepared you for this, for boys without shadows who grin at you like your hatred is everything they’ve been waiting for.

You wonder, once, why your book never warned you about him. Then you imagine trying to capture him on a page, and don’t think about it again.

 

 

6\. He meets your gaze, every time, like he was there first, always watching even without you realising, and you imagine most people would run a mile, jump a ship, take to the skies, to escape the madness glittering bright, fierce, in his eyes, like joy. You plant your feet, square your shoulders, spit back, because your mom raised you a king even if you didn’t know it, and Emma made you a hero, and even if you _hatehatehate_ him like heroes never should, they stand their ground. Fearless. 

You are beginning to forget what fear felt like in the first place.

 

 

7\. He smiles at you like a wolf, like this is a hunt and you're prey, like this is chess and he’s got you in check, cornered, and you hate it, and he doesn’t, he loves it, and you hate that more, hate him even more. He is under your skin, constant, salt pressed into a thousand paper cuts, riling you up like he lives for it, cruel and biting like he wishes he could sink his teeth into your flesh, and always _always_ smiling.

He hands you a crossbow and you shoot it at his heart, then he hands you a stick and teaches you how to make a sword, puts himself at your back, long hands wrapped around you, one at your waist, one at your wrist, talks you through a killing blow. Feel his breath hot at your neck when you swing.

Do not shiver.

 

 

8\. You have stopped crossing off days.

 

 

9\. It’s your face. You wait until he’s gone and pick it up out of the mud you threw it into, curious because you can’t not be, because you always have been, and because as much as you hate him, he makes you curious. You hate that you have to, hate that he’s winning, but you’re so full of hate these days that it’s starting to lose it’s meaning, so you pick it up and it’s _you_ , sketched down on paper you can feel the age of beneath your fingers, crinkled and creased with the wear of a thousand openings and reopenings. It’s your face and he’s been holding it against his chest for years, like you’re something he’s been waiting for, and you don’t understand it, or don’t want to, you’re _refusing_ in the stubborn marrow-deep way of the child you’re not sure you are anymore, because he stole you away and you need to hate him for that.

You’ve always known, buried in the back of your mind, that there was a reason he took you, a reason you’re here, but when you fall asleep clutching the sketch and wake up to it gone, you _know_.

 

 

10\. All the while you’re training, constant, knives and bows, back straight in soldier neat lines with the lost boys as you fire again and again, learn how to swing and not hesitate, how to draw blood without flinching. You grow stronger, quicker, and you shed your soft and gentle edges years ago, when he first said your name, grown out like the baby fat of your cheeks, and it is no longer a metaphor. You are still small, young, but you have grown meaner over the years, and you hit harder now, taking blows just to throw three back in quick succession; nose, kidneys, groin, until you’re breathing, hard, and above you all he is watching, something in his smile that you would call pride if it wasn’t so _hungry_.

The lost boys are wild, savage and unapologetic in everything but this and in a world where Peter Pan is king you do not understand what he needs an army for. Then he leads you into war, and his anger is terrifying because it is not anger, it is _wrath_ and it’s going to burn Neverland to the ground before the mermaids even have their chance. It is written in the creaking of the trees, bending, breaking, out of his way, the trembling of the earth under your feet as he stamps out an earthquake, and you follow, follow, follow, him.

You get blood on your knife.

 

 

11\. In the aftermath you cannot stop grinning, wide with bloodied teeth. Victory is infectious, contagious in whoops and shouts, adrenalin coursing like a thousand bubbles bursting in the hollow of your veins. And maybe that means something, maybe the blood on your knife, your hands, your teeth means that you are more lost boy than you ever were a hero, but the roar in your ears drowns it out and, hey, the battles were always the most exciting parts of your fairy tales.

He returns, and you don’t realise you’ve been waiting for him but you _have_ , god help you you have, like a needle on a compass swinging towards north, and he is soaked to the skin, blood in his hair, crowing wordless joy, euphoric, and it’s madnessmadnessmadness, like him, like this place, but your hands are shaking and the impulse to reach out, touch, _take_ , flashes diamond bright across your mind, electricity at your brain stem, white out. And he sees it, he always sees, because his eyes catch you, catch alight and burn, heat that pools deep behind your belly button, and his grin mutes, turns sly, calculating, and so _pleased_ with himself that your hatred flares up again and you snarl, stalk away, pretend you can’t hear his chuckles behind you, throaty, maddening.

 

 

12\. You’re not stupid enough to think that you stumble across Wendy Darling accidentally; Neverland runs in his veins and this is a test, a warning, anything but an accident. She is nothing like your storybooks, nothing in Neverland _is_ , all tangled hair and dancing hands, five foot nothing of insanity and rapture. Neverland has kept her young and her youth has made her mad, an ancient creature trapped inside a china doll body, she’s breaking, breaking, breaking, but never broken, and this is a warning, a glimpse into your future, if you let it happen, if you let him take you over like a flood and do not hold on to yourself.

But you are Henry Mills, and you’ve never been very good at just letting things happen to you.

 

 

13\. There is dirt on his neck. You know what he’s doing, you _know_ , and it’s driving you crazy which means that it’s _working_ which only makes it worse because then he’s winning, but he’s never gone so long without touching you before, treating threats like they’re suggestions and personal space like it’s a concept unheard of, so you’ve always had a hand dancing across your shoulder, breath at the nape of your neck, a knee against yours by the fire, but now there is a gap around you, cold, and you know what he’s doing but that doesn’t make it any easier because he has dirt on his neck and all you want to do is lick it, bite down on the tendons, bruise him.

You know and he knows you know because every time you follow the _up, down_ of his chest when he catches his breath, dancing mad around the fire, trace the lines of his neck upupup and find his eyes, they are always watching you, waiting, mouth open and hungry, before he turns away, grinning, flush high on his cheeks.

This is a game and you’re not sure who’s winning anymore.

  
  
  


14\. You are the truest believer and he has been saying that since day one, waiting for you for longer, and no matter how you try to unravel it and find the knife’s edge buried deep inside, it is the truth. He is in love with you, madly and viciously, but he loves you like breathing, like burning, and you don’t know how to turn away from that, don’t want to. He is terrifying, mad and ancient. He is the darkest creature you’ve ever met, heard of, read about, and you love him so much more than you hate him. You are the truest believer and you believe in him even when you shouldn’t.

Two roads diverge, diverged, will diverge, atop a Neverland cliff and you, stubborn like Emma, like Regina, like _yourself_ , take both.

 

 

15\. You find him, which is a lie because you follow him, out of camp and into the woods, bringing a knife to a fist fight, because that’s how he taught you, because it _is_ a fight and never a surrender, and you might be winning when he finallyfinally reaches out and touches again, long fingers against your skin as he breaks your hold, spins, smirks and opens his mouth, always _always_ talking too much, and you shut him up with your lips and your teeth and your tongue, taste blood. Take him to the floor when he laughs, cruel, delighted, push bruises into his hips, bloody his skin, bite down and leave imprints until he groans, shudders. Let him suck his own marks into you, denotations of property across something he doesn’t own, let him scrape his teeth across your thighs, hum around your cock, swallow.

Do not let go of your knife.

 

 

16\. Neverland has seeped into you, making you wild and vicious beneath his hands, and you have never shown him your underbelly but you tell him this, quiet, and he laughs. _Oh, Henry_ he grins, teeth sharp against your shoulder, _Neverland did nothing._

You’re still not sure what he meant.

 

 

17\. You made yourself forget, killed the hope in your chest all those years ago and buried it deep with your hurts and your heart. Surviving meant forgetting, meant becoming lost, and when you see Emma, crow’s feet at her eyes but still young because Emma Swan has never known how to be anything but lost, you still. Before you hopped a Greyhound and found her you were both lost, and now here you stand again, opposite your mother and trying not to shake, lost again, both of you. You tucked the boy Emma loves deep inside your heart where no one could touch him, not even you, and especially not him, and he cries out for her, visceral and painful.

You are that boy but he is not you, not anymore, so you watch your mother walks away, unknowing, still lost, and you hold still because if you move you will not be able to stop yourself. And you have never been grateful for the way he holds you like a possession, fucks you like you’re his, but now it holds you, grounds you.

He buries his face in your shoulder, bites down, and it is not soft but it is _yours_.

 

 

18\. You are not a boy anymore, for all that you are lost, but in some ways you will always be the Henry who stood at a cliff-face with nothing but a hand to hold and a vial of pixie dust, reckless and believing, because you love something ancient and terrible, hate him, so much some days that you cannot speak, cannot breathe unless it is into the hollow of his collarbone, nails down his back, but you alwaysalways love him and don’t know how to stop. You think it’s a little like that, taking a running leap into the darkness, diving into a tsunami, because he loves you madly, like lightning, only where lightning strikes once he strikes you again and again and again, lights you up.

Your heart is all over Neverland, tattooed with his fingerprints, because you’ve never known how to love things quietly, and when he kisses you like a timebomb, fucks you like a car crash, holds you like he’s dying, do not hold back.

Use teeth.

 

 


End file.
